Finding Pleasure in Pain

I wrote this post about four months ago. At the time it felt honest and raw, but also incredibly vulnerable, and I didn’t feel comfortable posting it. The post briefly goes into my experiences with Tantra, and while this work has been incredibly eyeopening for me and has had a huge impact in my development and awakening it also comes with a lot of stigma, and the work has a lot of ‘out there’ connotations in the public eye. And I was afraid of that judgement…

However, I have reached a point in time where every word in this post feels right, and I am ready to share, as the post is about so much more than one concept – it is about me and how I work through the rough times, and Tantra is only one of those tools. I hope this resonates with you.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

I’ve been struggling for a while. Not with the FIFO thing, although I’ve used that as an excuse for how hard life is at the moment.

The thing is, my selfcare and more importantly self-love routine has been suffering for a while, and while I stood as a by-stander and watched it happen (all the while telling myself “this has to change”), it still crept up on me that life gets really tough when you don’t look after yourself.

I’ve been on a really good path for the last two-and-a-bit years. I had my aha moment around my 38th birthday and it’s been moving along steadily since. Until recently when I became complacent and stopped putting enough value on my self care practices.

And here I was preaching self care to anyone who would listen, while simultaneously sabotaging my own practice. Oh how that makes you feel nice and shitty, and quite hypocritical.

It’s been a downward spiral spinning fast for the past couple of weeks, and it all culminated tonight. I was meant to see my tantra practitioner for a session, but she fell sick and had to cancel. The universe sending me a loud and clear message that I’m am meant to do this on my own. I spent the rest of the day procrastinating and distracting myself while feeling more and more crap. I even took it out on poor Caleb who’s away on the boat with the kids, stating that “I know I need to do the work myself, but I need you to give me some words of love”.

Of course he didn’t bite, he never does and that’s what drives me crazy and also why I love him so much. He stands firm in his own truth, and continues to teach me to stand in mine.

So, I stayed on the couch, weeping slightly and procrastinating some more.

Until a good friend reached out. Reminding me of all the things I knew I needed to do, and slowly breaking down my barriers with her words of wisdom. Eventually she wrote: And those words made the tears flow a little faster. And I knew it was time. So I excused myself from our exchange, got up, into my bedroom, sat on the floor and cried, surrendered and purged like I haven’t in a long time. I allowed all the emotions to come up, allowed them to rock and shake my body, and I did it all on my own – without the reliance of a practitioner.

When I felt like there wasn’t anymore left I curled up on the floor, reminding myself that “I’ve got me” and that I’ll always be there for me.

The purpose of this post? Firstly, to let you know that although I have a massive toolkit of tips and tricks, and know in theory how to move through crap, I’m far from perfect at practicing what I preach.

I also wanted to give you a little insight into my world, and one of the many tools I believe in to deal with crappy days. Often we get caught in stories about ‘my husband doesn’t tell me he loves me‘, or ‘the kids have been getting on my nerves all day‘, when really those things don’t matter. What matters is that there is an emotion knocking, wanting to be released, and there are ways to do that without involving anyone other than yourself. Instead of having to explain why you feel the way you do, and assign responsibility – whether to yourself or someone else – you can actually just release that emotion and then get on with life. I say ‘just’ in jest. Some emotions caused by traumatic experiences keep creeping up on us, and it can take years of releasing until you get to bottom of it, and in some instances you may need the help of a practitioner to get to the core of the emotion, but other times it really can be as simple as sitting with the emotion, really feeling into it, without trying to explain it, and just feeling, feeling, feeling. It can be uncomfortable and painful, but I assure you that once you get through there is so much reward. Eventually when practiced for long enough you might even get to appreciate the not-so-nice emotions because of the growth there is in feeling them.

With that, I leave you with permission and an invitation to feel today, to not be numb to what is moving in you (emotion = energy in motion), and to take time to release it.

And of course, if anything comes up that you are struggling to deal with, then please let me know so I can direct you to either work through it, or find someone who can.